BANG you're dead

The consolidated masthead thing worked great when Gannett Suburban Newspapers became the Journal News.

 

"The line-up of comics, which has varied from paper to paper, will become more uniform and will contain the most popular comics as determined by a recent poll of readers."


This will be the only thing the readers will care about.

 

I know how that works, because it happened at the Herald. They have the poll, then throw the results away and cancel the most expensive comic strips.

 

Further details?

 

That "news story" is depressing as hell.

This paragraph toward the end -- below the burried lede about job cuts -- really shows where the priorities are:

Note the order of "what's going on" in your neighborhood ...

 

The third graf might be my favorite

The rebranding includes numerous enhancements plus an emphasis on multimedia content delivery that will continue to enlighten and entertain readers while providing new opportunities for advertisers to engage readers.

Enhancements
Emphasis
Enlighten
Entertain
Engage

And how can they provide such improved greatness?

Employees (fewer)

 

Ben, in 2003 or so the Herald had a reader poll on comics. I'm a comics fan, so I was curious about the results, and was told firmly by management said results were confidential and no employee's business. Then about six months later, about five strips were canceled, including "Cathy," which we knew damn well was one of the MOST popular strips. A really good guy assistant managing editor told me it had all been about the money from the jump.

 

Normally I would expect a management to change its acronym from Bay Area News Group (BANG) to something like Northern California News Group (NCNG) just to avoid headlines like "BANG FIRES MORE STAFF".

But this is Singleton so the acronym may be a point of pride.